Tell the story about what this nominee achieved since the beginning of July 2015 (up to 650 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

OpenLink is the global leader in Transaction Lifecycle Management (TLM) software for the commodity, energy and financial services industries. Our clients rely on our software to make critical financial and operational decisions, so when they contact our support organization their expectations on prompt and value-added service are understandably high. Our software is complex and it can take individuals years of training and experience to build a strong base of knowledge. Our clients are also candid on their feedback, and one individual who has been a spotlight in feedback is Charles Eberhardt, who has an average satisfaction score of 9.4 (the highest across all global support staff) for the cases he has managed in 2016.

High Performing, Passionate, Team Player, Client Centric, Encouraging are the words you hear around the Tulsa office of OpenLink when the discussion shifts to Charles. Hired directly out of college with no professional customer service experience, Charles made an immediate and measurable impact to our customers. Charles has routinely demonstrated an earnest drive to deliver the highest level of customer service in the Global Support team, never settling for less than a stellar customer interaction. This is evident as a majority of all surveys where Charles was the case owner received a perfect 10 in satisfaction from the client and nearly 90% of responses were either a 9 or a 10! His name was so voluminously mentioned by customers to the extent where his name was prominently listed in the survey platform’s Word Cloud for all global support surveys (despite the fact that his division only accounts for a third of all survey results).

The characteristics Charles displays are a manager’s dream as he has an inner drive to achieve and succeed, which is balanced with his love of supporting and mentoring his colleagues. Charles’s determination to excel has sparked a collaborative and competitive environment within the Support team, which has helped build a sense of motivation and achievement around delivering outstanding service. Charles quickly demonstrated his proficiency and knowledge and rapidly became part of the group of “go to” individuals when critical or highly complex issues required additional knowledge – even by many individuals who have been with the organization far longer than him. Charles is often sought out by cross-functional teams outside of support for his expertise, whether it be from the engineering or QA teams on system behavior or product managers for insights into how a customer might be impacted by a software change. As a high performer consistently exceeding expectations of both his management and OpenLink’s clients, is it no wonder then that Charles received the fastest promotion to Senior Analyst in the Tulsa-based Support group – less than 18 months from his date of hire!

OpenLink’s clients need to know that we understand their issues and we are actively working on providing solutions. To get to the root cause of a problem, Charles exercises world-class investigation techniques and develops innovative new methods of problem-solving. By employing these effective practices Charles consistently surpasses the Support organization’s baseline KPIs, delivering exemplary customer service. In addition, Charles is one of the team members who has an excellent soft skillset in client communication, by demonstrating both a professional empathy for the impact and being able to effectively understand and articulate the challenge and action plan to address.

Complimenting Charles’ ability to delight customers in his interactions, is his desire to be involved in initiatives that shape the future of the global support organization. He has been an active participant in projects around improving career development, employee mentorship, new infrastructure rollout, and most recently as a leader in a project to replace OpenLink’s enterprise client support and relationship management systems.

In singling out Charles for this award we not only recognize his singular achievements, but hold up those achievements as exemplary goals for our entire organization to strive to achieve in support of our valued customers.